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Monday, November 18, 2013

Pilot Watch: Reign

As has been mentioned here before, I like most CW shows. I don't care if they're full of insanely unrealistic pretty people, I don't care if they're silly; I just likes them. And what's wrong with silly pretty people if it's well-written and entertaining? Nothing, that's what I says. So why did I wait for five episodes to pile up before I decided to give Reign a try? Well, it looked stoopid. Too stoopid for me. I had also heard not-good things about it. But, with the pilot episode about to expire from Hulu, I decided to go ahead and give it a go.

And people...it wasn't good. It made me giggle in places that I don't think were meant to be funny. It's like...if you've seen good productions of historical dramas, you know what they're supposed to look like. And this show is about Mary Queen of Scots, and there's a mental image you get when you think about shows about royalty. Mostly I think of Downton Abbey, full of production values and ACTORS and good writing. And I know DA isn't about royalty, per se, but it is about posh people wearing posh clothes and getting dressed for dinner and worrying about heirs and marrying for political purposes and not for love.

And Reign? Is full of pretty people playing dress-up. None of them look or act like they live in a different time period. The writing is silly, the acting is silly, and sometimes it's so silly it's giggle-inducing. For instance, this guy? The French dude Mary is supposed to marry?

Made me giggle SO HARD. There's just something so weird about his facial hair and his acting and I dunno, I just giggled at him. Not sexy AT ALL.

And then there's Hunky Nostradamus*. I guess at this point in time, Nostradamus was actually around 50, or 70, I dunno, but he was OLD. He definitely wasn't 20, which is what he looks like on this show. Which is just, well, silly. They could have hired someone venerable and made it interesting, but instead we get another generic stud who will be more believable as a romantic possibility for someone later on.

*I believe this term originated with Dan Feinberg from hitfix.com; at least that's where I first heard it.

If I graded such things, I'd probably give this one a C-. It wasn't terrible, but it sure wasn't good. However, I didn't immediately delete the rest of the episodes from my Hulu queue, so it's likely I'll give it a second episode.